Mumbai: Cuisine
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Noor Mohammadi Hotel & Restaurant, Bhendi Bazaar
As in 2023
Mohammed Wajihuddin, May 25, 2023: The Times of India
In each city, there are very few restaurants that can be called ‘iconic’, fewer still that can be referred to as an ‘institution’. Noor Mohammadi Hotel & Restaurant, which sits snugly ensconced in the bustling Bhendi Bazaar in south Mumbai’s Mohammed Ali Road, is one such place. The eatery, which turned 100 this year, is where the city goes to have its fill of Mughlai cuisine.
A week after Eid festivities, we visited the iconic restaurant to meet Khalid Hakim — who had just returned from Ajmer after paying tributes to Sufi saint Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti — and asked how Noor Mohammadi has withstood the test of time, the many innovations it has made, and the famous dishes it has introduced over the decades.
One thing that strikes you about the restaurant as you enter is an Urdu couplet adorning a wall. “Yeh sab tumhara karam hai aaqa/Ke baat ab tak bani hui hai.” Loosely translated, it means: “God, it is all because of your benevolence that we sustain till today.” Many say the word ‘aaqa’ refers to the Prophet and it is with the Prophet’s blessings that we are doing so well.
The port of call
Hakim’s grandfather Abdul Kareem came to Mumbai from Sambhal, a small town near Moradabad in Uttar Pradesh, in 1923. He started his food business with a bhatiyar khana — a kitchen-cum-sale counter, where food is sold and served from large pots. It was not unusual for him to do so.
“Our family has a long history with food,” says Hakim. “My ancestors would sell halwa-paratha at the annual Urs of Sufi saint Sabir Paak in Roorkee. When my grandfather came to the city, it was that legacy of cooking he fell back on when he began his bhatiyar khana.”
In the 1940s, as business began to prosper, the kurta-clad 57-year-old’s father Abdul Hakim opened a small outlet at the same site, and gave it the identity of a ‘hotel’ — in colloquial ‘Bambaiya’, a hotel is both a hotel and a restaurant. The decade was extremely tumultuous for India as independence from the British became imminent. It was also deemed as a ‘glorious period’ for Bombay (now Mumbai), as the city began to attract writers, poets, qawwals and filmmakers from across the subcontinent.
The streets of the city were milling with dreamers and hustlers looking to make it big. If you were alive in the city at the time, you would have surely run into the likes of Prithviraj Kapoor, Raj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand, BR Chopra (who came from Lahore, Rawalpindi and Peshawar), and writers and poets such as Saadat Hasan Manto, Ismat Chughtai, Ali Sardar Jafri, Sahir Ludhianvi and Kaifi Azmi.
Bhendi Bazaar, which falls between Mohammed Ali Road and Khetwadi, soon began to be considered the pitstop for many such newcomers. Though Noor Mohammadi’s nearest neighbour is Shalimar Hotel, it was Wazir Hotel a few feet away that began to distinguish itself as the favourite haunt of artists, who stayed in crammed, cheap kholis (rooms) in the locality, ate at Noor Mohammadi and chatted at Wazir for hours over cutting chai. The likes of Mohammed Rafi (who initially lived in a room above Wazir) and Shakeel Badayuni were regular patrons.
Matter of taste
Over the years, Noor Mohammadi began to add many new dishes to its regular fare of nalli nahari and chicken shami kebab. But before we go into that, it is worth noting how the aromatic nalli nahari became one of the most sought-after dishes among the restaurant’s patrons.
For the uninitiated, ‘nalli’ means marrow and ‘nahar’ means morning. Hakim says legend has it that the dish was introduced by the royal khansama (chef) as a nutritious breakfast dish for the Mughal king. The khansama would cook the meat on a coal-fired hearth for at least eight hours, and for the longest, it was served only in the mornings in the restaurant, until Hakim’s father had a brainwave.
“One fine morning, he put up a notice in Urdu at Noor Mohammadi announcing: ‘From now on, nalli nahari will not only be served during breakfast, but it will also be available for dinner’. So, that is how an essentially morning dish became available for dinner too,” he says. Today, it is one of the eatery’s best-sellers.
A few months ago, local member of legislative assembly Amin Patel invited activist and Mahatma Gandhi’s great-grandson Tushar Gandhi to inaugurate a chowk named after freedom fighter and Khilafat Movement leader Mohammad Ali Jauhar. Patel told his men to ask Tushar where he would like to have dinner. “I remember eating nalli nahari at Noor Mohammadi many times in my youth.
Take me there,” said Tushar. His wish was fulfilled.
Maestro MF Husain, as was his wont, memorialised his loyalty with an exclusive painting on November 27, 2003. “Husain sahab had come with his family. I went up to him and asked about the food. He gave a broad smile and took out a brush from his jhola, drew the painting then and there,” recalls Hakim. In 1986, Hakim renovated the hotel and added a first floor. Through a family friend, he invited actor Sanjay Dutt, who had previously enjoyed its food a lot. Dutt declared he cooked well and shared the recipe for a chicken dish with Hakim’s friend. It became chicken Sanju baba, chicken cooked in khada masala (unground spices).
The dish became an instant hit and is a must-have for foodies who throng Bhendi Bazaar during Ramzan. The day Dutt surrendered and was sent to prison in 1993 — on charges of possession of an AK-56 rifle, a 9mm pistol and ammunition in connection to the 1993 Mumbai blasts — the restaurant, as a mark of respect, stopped serving the dish for that day.
“But when he was released from jail, right from noon till midnight, sabko chicken Sanju baba free mein khilaya [we fed everyone the dish for free],” Hakim told reporters. There was a long queue outside the restaurant resulting in Hakim and his staff serving the delicacy past midnight. “This was not a publicity stunt; everybody has his way of expressing love and this was mine.”
In the family
Director of Urdu Markaz Zubair Azmi, who is writing a book on Bhendi Bazaar’s Bollywood connection, tells us that Wazir Hotel’s owner kept a diary that had names and numbers of all the qawwals (Jani Babu, Idris Nizami, Aziz Nazaan and Ismaeel Azad of “Hamein toh loot liya milke husn walon ne” fame, not to be confused with the recent song from Shah Rukh Khan’s Pathaan on which Deepika Padukone twirls). “Whenever someone needed a qawwal for a concert, he would leave his contact and the qawwal would call back,” he says.
Hakim’s father also kept a box that he called ‘Apke khatoot’ (your letters) for the migrants who had no fixed address in the city. They gave Noor Mohammadi as their address. Decades later, it is an important landmark.
For its famous trademark dishes, the hotel has traditionally never employed professionally trained chefs. “My cooks learnt the art inside the kitchen. They didn’t attend fancy cooking classes,” says Hakim. “Just as I learnt how to run it under my father’s tutelage, the cooks have learnt the skill on the job.”
Hakim, who learnt the joys of cooking from his grandfather and father, is now slowly passing on the baton to brother Rashid, son Wajahat and nephew Danish. “We are a family that lives and feeds together,” laughs Hakim.
Today, the restaurant has opened branches at Kurla in Mumbai and in Dubai. Unlike many players in the market who came in much later and prospered exponentially, Noor Mohammadi’s progress has been slow and consistent. “We are not in a race with anyone,” says Hakim. “My father used to often tell me to create my own identity, not become anybody’s copycat.”
